My paternal line were farmers in Staplehurst and I have a great deal of information already on them. My research has now taken me to a whole new level of genealogy and I have been able to trace my GGG Uncle leaving Staplehurst in 1851 with his family, heading for a new life in the USA. (Jesse CHAINEY Jnr born 1809 Staplehurst and Catherine CLAVER born 1812 Charing, Kent).

Although I am sure Jesse thought he was doing the best for his family, his son Alfred CHAINEY, lost his life in the American Civil War during the battle of Corinth. He was only 20 years old. Another of Jesse’s children, Richard, was murdered in 1916 after an argument with a neighbouring farmer. (This case study can be found on my website).

Jesse’s granddaughter, Elsie May ROBERTS married William OBERST and they had six children. Tragedy struck this family in 1928 when their son Owen, aged just 17 years, confessed to murdering both his parents and all of his 5 siblings.

I am now planning and developing this extraordinary case for publication, although some months away, I would like to ask you if your organisation can provide me with a narrative of how life was for farmers in Staplehurst around the time of Jesse’s emigration (1851). Of course, I will be very happy to give an acknowledgement for whatever you may be able to provide.

In 1841 Jesse Jnr was living and working on his father’s farm “Heartsheath Manor Farm” (Jesse Lambert CHAINEY 1776-1857).

Thank you for your email of 16/12/2015 about Jesse Chainey
(1809-?). We in Staplehurst did not realise that he had emigrated to
America with his family in 1851. It is so hard to notice the gaps
when people move away. So we would be very pleased to be told where
he went, and when he and his wife Catherine died? In the 1851 census
he had already gone somewhere, because his wife Catherine is head of
the household, an agricultural labourer’s wife living at the old
Quarter on the east side of the main road leading to Cranbrook. These
were old timber houses, probably Tudor, rat-ridden, due to be taken
down by 1861 as soon as better brick houses had been built for their
workers by Henry Hoare the banker and his wife the Lady Mary of
Staplehurst Manor. Henry wanted to dig a lake in their place. It was
usual for men to go abroad first, often with a relative, to earn enough money to bring the family over to join them.

On the other side of the road, in one of the houses already
established on the west side, lived Jesse Chainey (1776-1857) as a
lodger with his son-in-law George Huggins and his (Jesse senior’s)
daughter Martha. He was 71. He had given up the tenancy of Hartsheaf
Farm in 1847. Before 1847 Jesse junior was called a farmer when his
first two children were baptised, but for the third and fourth
baptisms he was called a labourer. Presumably he didn’t have
resources enough to take on the tenancy himself (his father had held
it since 1797), but the new tenant was Charles Cleaver, who must have
been related to Jesse junior’s wife Catherine Clever.

Which farm was it? The name Hartsheaf covers three farms, now
differentiated as Husheath, Hartsheath and Little Hartsheath. In 1843
in the Maidstone Journal of 12 September Mr Chainey was congratulated
on a superb hay crop at HUSH-HEATH, so I think he must have lived
there. But in 1836 he was to look after viewers of woodland as Mr
Chainey, HARTSHEAF FARM. The Tithe map of 1842 has Daniel West at
Hartsheath and Jesse Chainey at Hartssheaf.

Staplehurst parish lies in heavy clay soil, hard work for the
arable farmer. From the 1830s to the 1870s the farming industry was
depressed, especially as farmers paid rates on land, which grew
heavier with every pauper depending on the parish for alms.
Emigration became the rage, either assisted by the parish (who
shipped off the future fathers and mothers of paupers when children
left with their parents) or financed by their own endeavours. I think
that is how Jesse junior went.

Anita Thompson, member of the Staplehurst History Group,
Staplehurst Society.